Of Wings and Wolves (18 page)

“I like it when you writhe,” he said, lips dropping to her jaw. He nibbled gently at the soft skin of her neck. The hard edge of teeth made her head swim. His hand pushed the hem of her shirt over her breast, exposing her to the cool night air.

“There are better ways to do that,” Summer said.

“Yes,” Nash said, “there are.” And then he sucked her nipple into his mouth, hot and wet, and she felt him gently bite the flesh.

His cool fingers slipped underneath her shorts, skimming the soft, smooth skin below her belly button. He was careful and slow, and Summer hated it. She grabbed his wrist and pushed him lower. His hand slipped between her legs.

Nash’s index finger drew patterns on the outside of her panties, drawing moans from Summer’s throat. Her hand seized against the back of his head. “Better ways indeed,” he said. That smirk was all devil, even when his face was framed with the arch of his wings.

She lifted her hips, allowing him to push the shorts down. She wasn’t embarrassed anymore. The way he looked at her flooded every inch of her body with heat.

When she locked her leg around his hip and pulled his weight on top of her, she was rewarded with a satisfying groan, a sound that was much more man than angel. Summer wanted to find all the ways she could get him to make noises like that. She wasn’t going to stop until she found them.

His wings shielded them from the rest of the world, forming a canopy of feathers. The night was dark, and they were alone, but all Summer knew was light.

fifteen

Nash used to be friends
with an angel named Samael. Such relationships were looked down upon as the kind of petty nonsense that mortals enjoyed—angels didn’t forge friendships; they forged
alliances
. But what they had shared was impossible to describe in any other way.

They brought swift and righteous death upon those who deserved it, side by side as allies, and then spent long hours discussing things that had nothing to do with Heaven, God, or the unfolding war. They flew together, enjoyed companionable silences when there was nothing left to be said, and continually sought one another out even after years apart. They had been birthed from the same seed in the garden many eons past, and Nash thought that it almost made them brothers, in a way—but family wasn’t something angels did, either.

Once, after a battle that spilled mortal blood like crimson waterfalls, they sat upon the roof of a great library to rest. They spoke of many boring things, but eventually, the conversation turned to angelic politics.

“Have you seen Gabriel lately?” Samael asked.

Nash lifted his sword to study it in the fading sunlight. There was still blood on the metal from his last encounter with the Spartans. “No. Hasn’t she been stationed in Dis?”

“Supposedly,” Samael said. “But nobody has sighted her in months there, either. Rumor says that she’s become fascinated and is hiding somewhere on the mortal planes.”

Nash laughed as he wiped his blade on the leg of his trousers. “Gabriel, fascinated? With a
mortal
?”

“I know, I know. It’s hard to imagine.”

“How did you learn of this?” Nash asked.

“Because I’ve been ordered to locate and kill her.” Samael let out a sigh. “The hunt for treason within our ranks has become absurd. Killing one of our finest archangels for becoming fascinated with a human—it’s absurd. Wasteful. The mortal won’t live longer than a blink anyway.”

“Will you do it? Will you kill her?”

Samael had only shrugged, and Nash never found out if he did the job or not.

That had been the last time they met before the search for treason turned an accusatory finger toward Nash. Just weeks before Leliel betrayed him.

The war meant more contact with humans, and more of the ethereal ranks falling into fascination. Their greatest warriors were the most vulnerable. None of them seemed to have control of themselves once they sank into such a state.

As for Nash, he was already wedded to Leliel, and an angelic partnership was irrevocable. He believed himself to be immune.

For millions of years, he was right.

Summer had exhausted herself by
trying to run away from her life in the form of a wolf, and it was amusing how quickly she went from vibrant, responsive, and moaning to a limp body snoring within the circle of his arms.

Nash had no clue if such a soporific effect was normal for mortals after consummating with an angel, but he decided to take it as a compliment.

Her eyelashes were lace fluttering on her cheeks with every twitch of her closed eyes, her lips were still plump from being kissed, and her hair was filled with grass. He had never seen anything so beautiful.

“I have fallen,” he whispered to Summer’s sleeping face.

She snuggled closer to his body, smacked her lips, and remained asleep.

Nash abandoned their clothing on the mountaintop and gathered her into his arms. A shame that she should sleep through their second flight together when she had so enjoyed the first. The joy of her laugh was permanently tattooed on his heart.

Summer remained asleep while he carried her back to the house in which he had lived for some number of decades. He alighted on the balcony, pushed the doors open, and settled her gently on his bed. She never once stirred. Her body was limp and trusting.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood over Summer, his wings hanging behind him and a strange sensation curling through his heart.

So many thousands of years alone. So much heartache, misery, and sadness. He had spent almost all of his life writhing in hate and thinking of nothing but retribution. Yet standing over Summer, all of those thoughts were impossibly distant. There was no desire to hurt left inside of him.

He almost didn’t feel like he was exiled anymore.

Nash might have stood over the bed all night if a scraping noise hadn’t drawn his attention. It came from outside the window, and he was instantly on high alert.

He pulled on new slacks and concealed his wings as he walked onto the balcony. There was no need to panic his guards—not yet. But his senses told him that there was something ethereal nearby, something other than him.

If those balam had returned for Summer, he would slaughter them.

Nash’s eyes skimmed his property. Members of his security team were farther down the hill, doing their usual rounds with no sign of alarm. It looked like there was another charity function at his gazebo, too. He wondered, with sick amusement, if he hadn’t known about it because he had told his assistants that he didn’t
want
to know about those, or if it was because he wasn’t in charge of Adamson Industries anymore.

A flash of white skin up the beach drew his attention. A gibborim? It was too distant to tell.

Nash glanced at Summer’s sleeping form again. Given infinite time, he would have climbed back in bed with her and seen how much it would take to rouse her again. But he only closed the doors, jumped off the balcony, and drifted gently to the lawn below.

As he drew closer to the lake, the sensation of an ethereal presence vanished.

One stretch of the beach was illuminated by spotlights. A team of men were shouting to each other indistinctly, some of them in scuba gear, others with snorkels pushed to their hair.

“How’s the search going?” Nash asked.

Everyone stopped to stare at him. He drummed his fingers against his hips impatiently, waiting for them to get through the typical shock that all mortals had when encountering him for the first time.

Eventually, one of the men in wetsuits spoke. “We’ve searched about twenty-five percent of the lake,” he said. There was a name tag sewn on the breast of his gear. Edwin.

“I wanted it done by tonight.”

“With all due respect, Lake Ast is huge, sir,” Edwin said. “And considering the weather—”

Nash silenced him with a gesture. At any other time, he would have fired the lot of them for the failure and hired people who had a more appropriate sense of urgency. But he was still buzzing from his evening with Summer. He felt unusually gracious.

Worst of all, her voice was whispering at him from the back of his mind. He knew what she would say if she heard what he was thinking.
These guys are just trying to support their families, Nash…

Was consideration contagious? He hoped not.

“Please bring in another shift to continue working through the night,” he said. “It’s urgent. You may name your price.”

“We’ll do our best,” Edwin said.

“Thank you.”

Nash stepped around them and continued walking, searching for the ethereal presence that he had felt.

But the only person he found was Summer’s brother walking along the shore, hands jammed in his pockets and that perpetually brooding expression darkening his eyes.

Abram Gresham looked more like Gwyneth than his sister did. The twins were as different as the water was from the shore. Where Summer glowed with warmth, and an internal light that Nash found irresistible, Abram was forged from stone.

When the young man saw Nash approaching him, he stopped cold.

“Don’t you think that it’s a beautiful night?” Nash asked.

“Leave me alone,” Abram said.

And this was why Nash usually didn’t bother trying to be kind to mortals. “Where have you been?”

Abram picked up his pace and sped toward the house.

As the young man walked past, Nash noticed a bulge at the small of his back. It had been a long time since Nash had been a warrior, but he still knew a concealed weapon when he saw one, and Abram walked like a man prepared to shoot.

Nash snagged the gun out of Abram’s belt in a single, swift motion. It was the kind of gun he equipped his guards with. It must have been stolen.

“Summer is into trespassing and you’re into theft,” Nash said, double-checking the safety. “The Gresham family is filled with charming quirks.”

Abram didn’t try to take the gun back. “What do you want?”

“Only to speak with you.”

“Why? Do you want to use me, too?”

So Abram had learned what Nash had planned. But it sounded so much worse coming from the young man’s lips—Nash only wanted to “use” Summer as much as she would allow it.

Nash dropped the magazine from the pistol. “Harming Summer has never been my intent. You must understand, I’ve been alone for a very long time, and—”

“That heartbreaking crap might work on my sister, but I’m not as nice as she is,” Abram interrupted. “I don’t care how long you’ve been alone or how fashionable it is for angels to think humans are useless pieces of crap. I’m going to tell you this once: You fuck with my sister, you fuck with me.”

“Big words from a vegetarian artist,” Nash said.

Shock slackened Abram’s features. “How did you—?”

“You ordered a ‘tofu dog’ on the day you were meant to interview for my internship. You hoped to get the job so that you could convince me to build a new gallery.” Nash hooked a finger in the trigger guard and spun the gun through the air. “I spoke to your teachers.”

“Why?”

“I don’t welcome people into my home that I don’t already know.” He stopped spinning the gun, popped the magazine back in, and then held the weapon out.

Abram didn’t hesitate to take it back. “What do you want from me?”

“Cooperation,” Nash said. “We will have to work together to escape this place. Furthermore, during my last visit to Adamson Tower, I made some arrangements. You see, that building has a foyer that would work well as an art gallery. Invitations for an event tomorrow night have been sent to virtually everyone in Hazel Cove and Wildwood.” He lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “Everyone who matters.”

“You can’t buy me,” Abram said.

It was so similar to what Summer had told Nash at the coffee shop that he had to laugh. “You’ll be only one artist featured among many. I’ll give you no special treatment. It will be the responsibility of your paintings to speak for themselves.”

“Why?”

“It’s not unusual for a wealthy man who has invested in MU before to encourage education by—”

“No. Why do you care about whether or not my art gets displayed fairly?”

Nash lifted his chin. “To be frank, I don’t. I’ve seen too many great artists fall under the waves of time to care. But it matters to Summer.
You
matter to Summer. She loves nothing more than you and Gwyneth, and I must learn to care about the things she does.”

“That’s fucking pathetic,” Abram said, but there was no ire in his voice. He folded his arms and considered Nash for several silent moments. Finally, he said, “I have a painting that’s six feet tall and twelve feet wide. It would be hard to display well.”

“My engineers are fully capable of handling anything you have produced.”

“And you want to have this gallery thing at your business, which Leliel has completely taken over in a matter of days,” Abram said. “You’re insane.”

Nash spread his arms wide. “She can have the house, my company, my life. But she can’t have my dignity. Consider it a final gesture of revolt.”

The men studied each other in the night, the silence broken only by water lapping over the beach.

When Summer’s brother gave no response, Nash simply walked away.

He was hopeful that the boy would come around in time for the gallery opening, but the silence was not promising. Nash tried not to walk quickly as he returned to the house, but he still couldn’t help but imagine a bullet embedding between his shoulder blades.

Nash spent the rest of
the night watching Summer sleep. But once the sun rose, he extracted a suit from his closet and left without disturbing her.

It was unusual for him to be working at the same time that Margaret performed her morning chores, since Nash was subjecting himself to his sunrise vigil at that hour. But Margaret didn’t remark on his presence in the kitchen. She only gave him a very small smile, helped him find the strawberries, and pushed him outside again.

Summer was still sleeping by midmorning, when he started to dress for the day. He brushed a kiss over her forehead and went to his office.